Nobel Memorial Prize-winner Milton Friedman, one of the most influential economists of the past century and an outspoken advocate of free markets and free choice, died Nov. 16 at the age of 94.

Friedman's brand of laissez-faire capitalism seems mainstream today, but it was a major break from another great economist of the 20th century: John Maynard Keynes, who advocated government intervention to smooth economic cycles.

Friedman's work focused on open markets and monetarism, which stresses the importance of the money supply in inflation and business cycles. He famously said, "Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon."

Though he was a highly respected academic, Friedman was also a best-selling author who wrote extensively on public policy. Among his best-known popular works is Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, which became a top-selling non-fiction book in 1980. It was written with his wife, Rose Friedman, to accompany a public television series. Friedman also wrote columns in Newsweek magazine.

Friedman had far-ranging interests. He advocated greater school choice via vouchers. An opponent of the military draft, he was a major force in ending U.S. conscription in 1973. Friedman questioned the war on drugs and even whether the state should have power to license doctors and other professionals.

He never held a high public office, but Friedman was an adviser to U.S. presidents and foreign governments. He was a leading member of the Chicago School of economics, a conservative group of scholars at the University of Chicago.

Friedman helped reshape understanding of the Great Depression, illuminating the role played by central bank policy.

Along with 2006 Nobel Memorial winner Edmund Phelps, Friedman promoted the view that that there was not a sustainable long-run tradeoff between inflation and unemployment. Friedman's theories in the 1960s correctly predicted the rise of unemployment and inflation at the same time, known as stagflation.

Born in 1912, Friedman was the son of Eastern European immigrants in a working-class family in Rahway, N.J.

Friedman paid his way through Rutgers University with a scholarship and a series of odd jobs.

He earned a bachelor's degree from Rutgers in 1932, a master's from the University of Chicago in 1933 and a doctorate from Columbia University in 1946. He was a senior research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution from 1977 until his death. He was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1976, when he won the Nobel for economics.

In an autobiography, Friedman talked of meeting his wife, who survives him, while she was a "shy, withdrawn, lovely and extremely bright fellow economics student" at the University of Chicago. They were married in 1938.